Deftly crafted history illuminates the nation’s earliest days.
How a little-known member of the Plymouth settlement made a significant impact on its success.
Attorney Mack, a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, makes his book debut with an absorbing, perceptive biography of Stephen Hopkins (1581-1644), who made two voyages from England to the New World. As the author argues convincingly, he proved to be “a key figure in the Pilgrims’ struggles and triumphs.” Hopkins sailed first to Jamestown in 1609, remaining there for a few years. In 1620, he joined the passengers of the Mayflower: the Saints, bound by religious covenant, and the dissident Strangers, Hopkins among them. Because he left no diary or journal, Hopkins has been neglected by historians, overshadowed by his contemporaries Myles Standish and William Bradford. But Mack makes judicious use of evidence to create a nuanced portrait of a complex man—independent, intelligent, “stubborn when he felt wronged”—who took an influential role, bringing to decisions wisdom gleaned from his earlier experiences. Those experiences were dire: Shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda in 1609, Hopkins became mired in scandal, accused of mutiny, and sentenced to death. He escaped to Jamestown, where he found himself “on the doorstep of hell”: The town was in ruins, the population decimated by starvation, and relationships with Native peoples were tense. The author creates a visceral sense of the hardship of settlement and of trans-Atlantic crossing, when ships were at the mercy of doldrums or tempests. “The wooden ship groaned and creaked,” he writes, and in the dark living area, “the smells of 150 unwashed people and rotting food intensified.” Many died during the voyage. The survivors, their food stores perilously diminished, landed on cold, inhospitable terrain, and attack by Indigenous tribes seemed probable. Because he had advocated for diplomacy with Natives in Jamestown—where he had met Pocahontas—Hopkins, “a cool thinker,” pressed for conciliation and peace. His success in developing rapport and forging bonds between Pilgrims and Natives opened “the door to the prospect of prosperity that came with peace.”
Deftly crafted history illuminates the nation’s earliest days.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64160-090-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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